All Forum Posts by: Theresa Holl

Hidden rooms are really easy to build and can be a huge conversation piece.  My friend had a secret cinema room and just gave a few hints about how to find it in the guest welcome basket.  People absolutely loved it.  

Also, having an "Instagrammable moment" like a mural with your own hashtag on it as a focal point makes the social media game much more intuitive for your guests.

For those with retreat properties who need to hunt down event clients, I'm hearing great things about South African VAs for outside sales.  It turns out Americans love their accents and they run about $2K USD per month for legit talent.  That's not a hack, but could help you book some high dollar corporate clients.

Noelle - SEO is a good skill to have.  While there are a few trickier technical items that make it work on the back end, you can use AI and trends.google.com to combine automated blog creation with high-performing keywords.  Semrush is another resource to be familiar with.  Here's how we teach it:

1. Look up high-performing keywords with the tools above

2. Use Jasper AI to write blogs for your site.  This is how you load your website with the keywords Google wants to see.  Use every high-performing word at least 5 times so Google sees it.  This is why blogs are so repetitive.  

3. As far as optimizing your listing on the OTAs, you can also use Jasper or even ChatGPT to write captions for each picture and describe all the furniture, bedding and kitchen utensils/gadgets in detail.  More than just describing the items, describe the experience the guest will have.  You can tell your AI tool to make the copy more emotionally compelling and you should perform much better as a listing.  

4.  Hospitable has a feature called "heartbeat" that automatically updates your listing every day or so.  The effect is that Airbnb boosts your search performance because it prioritizes updated listings.  This is totally automated, so you don't have to do anything but set it and forget it.  Not sure how many people know about that feature. 

Hey Andrew - my STR clients are pretty dispersed, also spoke with a ton of investors at the Nashville conference recently. I am in Minneapolis. A lot of my coaching clients are here in the midwest but their listings are nationwide.

Love this. OTA dependence is so risky and Airbnb doesn't care what happens to any individual host.  Plus, with your own website, you can run Google Analytics to analyze and leverage your traffic as well as a blog for SEO. You can also step up your content game with 3D virtual tours, drone videos, etc...

This is the research I'm seeing as well.  My clients are doing well and looking to differentiate to hit hyper growth mode.  It does look like the people getting out had bad timing or optimistic assumptions. 

@Brad Gibson - People love Hospitable for smaller portfolios, but I'm in talks with Guesty about a strategic partnership and they have a new platform coming out for smaller businesses. I'm super excited about it for my STR clients because it is currently anything but seamless to convert from Guesty for Hosts to Guesty for Pro. I told them that and they said a change is coming. Hope it's as good as I'm expecting. :)

Definitely get completely optimized on the first couple OTAs and maybe a channel mgr before investing a lot in software.  Optimized doesn't just mean your digital environment, but all the basics like making sure the rooms look photogenic and have an Instagrammable moment, having backups off all bedding and replaceable items so your property always looks like the pictures, setting up strategic partnerships with local businesses, tour guides, etc...

As far as management - make sure to have a handful of cleaners and contractors on good terms. Also, this could be a good time to start getting to know VAs and experimenting with outsourced talent from around the world. I'm currently working with an outstanding VA from the Philippines and throwing a few small practice projects at her to see how she performs. I've also heard great things about South Africa and Nigeria for VAs. Don't start looking for these folks once you need them. Get comfortable with building a team so that once you grow, it's a network ready for you. Happy to connect you with some folks if you want to start learning. :)

Prepare for growth. :)  Good luck!

Direct booking site to build your own brand and reduce OTA dependence 

Social media/marketing automation like Social Pilot, Jasper and Canva.

Google Analytics GA4 tags on your website to harness your website traffic and build a growth plan based on client data.

Adobe Firefly for text to picture, streamlining content creation. 

VAs and back up VAs to run your automation systems, allowing you to scale and exit.

It's a start.

Hey Bill - I do marketing coaching for REI and sold enterprise technology for 15+ years. Happy to walk you thru some of the latest and greatest in the AI space if you want to tell me more about your goals. Some of my favorite stuff right now: Jasper (like chatGPT but build for marketing), Tolstoy (video FAQ system for your website), and a FB automation tool from Stonefeather Marketing. Big time savers.